Treme Brass Band

Benny Jones Sr. founded the Treme Brass Band in the early 1990s after playing drums in the Olympia Brass Band and leading the Dirty Dozen and Chosen Few bands. Jones' schooling in traditional New Orleans music, though, went back to his childhood.

"I started playing on pots and pans around the house because I always was surrounded by musicians," Jones told NEA interviewer Mary Eckstein. "My father, Chester Robert Jones, was a drummer. He played with all the old bands, bands like the Eureka Brass Band and the Allman Brass Band. He played at Preservation Hall. My oldest brother was a drummer with a band on Bourbon Street for many years. I was born and raised in the Treme area, a neighborhood [near the French Quarter] that had lots of musicians, drummers. That's where I got my influences, from my father and my brother and all the musicians around me. …

"In that neighborhood, back in the '50s and the '60s, you had jazz funerals and parades always passing by. There were a bunch of social and pleasure clubs in that neighborhood, in the Old Caledonia, at a club called the Square Deal, and so on. My father and a bunch of old musicians played a lot of jazz funerals — when someone in a club died, they always wanted a jazz funeral. On the weekends they might play for a parade. Social and pleasure clubs have parades every year, and his band would perform. I was very inspired by that."

For the parades and social clubs, bands would play fast music – "When the Saints Go Marching In," "Second Line," "Mardi Gras New Orleans," Jones said: "real up-tempo tunes you can dance to all day long." For funerals, the musicians would play hymns and dirges on the way to the graveyard, then snappier tunes on the way back.

Jazz funerals have changed, Jones said. "When the young people have a jazz funeral, they don't want sad music. They want up-tempo music. They want fast music. But we continue to play the traditional music. I tell people, 'If you've got young people and you want a young band, hire a young band. If you want to hire my band, we're going to play the old, traditional music on the street.' I'm a traditional musician, and I want to try to keep the traditional jazz funerals going in New Orleans."

Hurricane Katrina scattered the members of the band, along with many other residents of New Orleans. Jones migrated to Dallas, where he was contacted by someone in Arizona asking if he could put the band together to play. Jones managed to reunite most of the members there, and they stayed there a few months, replacing the instruments and clothing they had lost and playing some gigs. Most subsequently returned home to New Orleans. With financial help from a few small foundations, they have persevered in playing the music they love.

"I love making people happy, and I love working with the kids," Jones said. "I'm always trying to teach kids how to play the bass drum or the snare drum to try to keep the tradition going. The children are our future."